'Freelance Writer of the Year', 2014 Online Media Awards

Menu

Monthly Archives: June 2014

Copenhagen, Denmark – Perched on top of a tall column at a road junction in the Norrebro neighbourhood of Copenhagen, an enormous American-style ringed doughnut demands to be noticed.

Photo by Simon Hooper

Photo by Simon Hooper

Photo by Simon Hooper

Photo by Simon Hooper

Photo by Simon Hooper

“De Angelis. Delightfully different DONUTS,” reads the sign. Further down the street, a mock lighthouse advertises a self-storage warehouse, vying for attention on the busy skyline with the branded flags of car showrooms and industrial chimneys.

Next to the lighthouse is the latest vertical addition to this mundane urban landscape that is currently stoking controversy in the Danish capital. A slender minaret topped with a small crescent marks the site of Denmark’s first purpose-built mosque.

Many thanks to the organisers, sponsors and judges at the Online Media Awards and to Al Jazeera for putting my work forward for consideration. It was a happy surprise to be named Freelance Writer of the Year for my work looking at the issues and challenges faced by British Muslim communities.

London, England — The UK government is facing accusations of demonising Muslims and playing politics with children’s futures over its tough response to reports of an alleged Islamist plot, dubbed ‘Trojan Horse’, to take over schools in the English city of Birmingham.

Michael Wilshaw, the UK’s top schools inspector, said Park View was doing “fantastically well” on a visit to the school in 2012 [http://www.pvet.co.uk/]

Representatives of Muslim organisations and communities affected by the controversy, which was triggered by what is now widely regarded as a discredited leaked document, warned that the government was fuelling Islamophobia following publication this week of a series of critical reports into the schools under scrutiny.

A Somali man forcibly returned to Mogadishu from the UK under a controversial new scheme to send home failed asylum seekers has described how he was punched and kicked by the British guards who accompanied him, and left bleeding in a cell after having a tooth knocked out.

The man, who did not want to be identified because he fears for his safety, also told Al Jazeera how he was restrained in handcuffs for most of his journey aboard Turkish Airlines flights via Istanbul and pressured by his escorts to sign a document stating that he had returned to his homeland voluntarily.

Speaking on the telephone from the Somali capital, he said he was resigned to dying in a city that is still plagued by ambushes and bombings and considered unacceptably dangerous for returning refugees by most humanitarian organisations.